Life
Helen Keller said it best: “The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart.”
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This week, I found myself sitting for hours in a packed public hospital waiting room. The queue barely moved. Plastic chairs scraped on the floor, babies cried somewhere in the distance, and every few minutes someone would sigh loudly and ask, “Who’s the last one in the line?” It was the kind of scene that…
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There is a quiet moment that comes before any serious act of writing. It is not the moment of inspiration, as it is often described. Not a sudden idea or a clear sentence forming fully in the mind. It is something slower, less certain. A kind of hesitation. The recognition that there is something you…
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What must we think when a president, during a press conference, can hone in on a journalist doing her job and say, “she’s a horror show”, and the moment simply passes? Not merely passes politically, but morally. No visible discomfort from those around him. No meaningful defence of the journalist’s dignity. No national conversation about…
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How I found comfort in the queue for a Covid-19 vaccination. Thursday afternoon my phone buzzed with an SMS, “you have been scheduled for vaccination on 21 May between 2pm and 4pm”. I cannot tell you the complexity of feelings that went through me at that moment, of relief, of fear, of gratitude, of stress.…
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On 25 May Africa celebrates. And it has good reason to do so. While today is officially Africa Day, a day noting the formation in 1963 of the Organisation African Unity, now the African Union, it is worthwhile using this day to reflect on our perceptions of the continent. Africa has, through recent history, been…
Jenn Writes 